---
title: Habitat - Demo - Setting Up a Service Group Topology
description: The “Try Habitat” is an interactive, in-browser demo that walks you through how to build, configure, and run packages in Habitat.
step: 6
total_steps: 7
---
h2.page-body--title Setting Up a Service Group Topology

p
  | That last step was powerful! Now, you're probably wondering how these services
    were set up to communicate with each other. It's actually not as
    complicated as you might suspect thanks to some built-in Habitat features.
p
  | By default, Habitat places running services into a
    <a href="/docs/concepts-services/">Service Group</a> with a
    standalone topology. However, as we'll see below, you can explicitly start
    services in a user-defined group that can optionally apply alternative
    topologies.
p
  | Suppose your application needs to share state and requires a certain start
    order for its services. In this situation, you can leverage a leader/follower
    topology by simply adding a couple more instructions to the
    <code>hab start</code> command.

code
  | hab start -t leader core/redis

= partial "partials/terminal" do

#success
  = partial "partials/advance_button" do
    | Next - Connect additional services

= partial "partials/previous_button" do
  | Back to previous step
